Monday, April 17, 2017

The Homelessness Dot Map

According to a new map of the homeless California and New York have the highest number of homeless people. The northeast as a whole has the highest population of homeless families. However the southwest has the most homeless children.

Understanding Homelessness is an amazing dot map of where the homeless are located across the United States, The map allows you to see which areas have the biggest problems with homelessness. It also allows you to analyse the demographics of the homeless population in a number of ways.

Understanding Homelessness has a number of filter controls and visualization options which allow you to explore the homelessness data in various different ways. You can get a good understanding of how these filter & visualization options work by pressing the 'Tell Me A Story' button. If you do this you can progress through a number of different observations about the nature of homelessness in the United States using the filter & visualization options.

The ability to explore the data is very impressive. As are the dot animations as you switch between the different visualization methods, My one problem with this map is the data itself. The map says that the data is based on a nationwide count by volunteers made in January 2015. This resulted in a count of 546,580 homeless people across the United States. This information makes me worry a little about the accuracy of the data. At the very least Understanding Homelessness needs to provide more information on how the data was collected.